In a viral Instagram post, content creator @queenbeebailey is calling out what she describes as a deep-rooted cultural problem: the way society raises men to become fathers “in name only.”
She says this leaves women to shoulder the emotional and practical weight of parenting alone.
“Most men are socialized to make women single mothers because most men are raised to have children, not to be fathers,” Bailey said in her now widely shared video. “Even if you get married, that does not make you exempt from being a single mother.”
Bailey’s post is shaking tables online, with women across generations flooding the comments to share personal experiences that echo her point. Her argument is blunt and piercingly familiar to many mothers: patriarchy, she says, shapes boys to see fatherhood as a title, not a responsibility.
The Parenting Gap
In her video, Bailey paints a vivid picture of this imbalance, of mothers juggling everything from sleepless nights to school pickups, while partners “weaponize incompetence” to avoid pulling their weight.
“You realize that you’re not just raising children,” she says, “you’re raising a man-child.”
Sociologists and family studies experts have long observed similar trends.
Research from the Pew Research Center shows that while men today spend more time on childcare than previous generations, mothers still carry the majority of the physical and emotional labor.
What Bailey’s commentary adds is the emotional undercurrent, the frustration, the loneliness, and the quiet resignation that so often accompany the modern motherhood experience.
Why Her Message Resonates
Bailey’s post goes beyond finger-pointing; it’s a call for women to protect themselves, emotionally, physically, and even financially, before entering parenthood. Her message is especially resonant for younger women who grew up seeing their mothers do it all and are determined not to repeat the cycle.
Her statement that “even if you’re married, that does not make you exempt from being a single mother” is a controversial statement that challenges traditionalists’ views of maintaining family structures at all costs. Instead, she takes up the feminists’ worldview that marriage alone doesn’t guarantee partnership.
A Larger Reckoning
The broader question Bailey’s post raises, one increasingly echoed in online feminist spaces, is whether fatherhood is still seen as optional labor, something men can participate in when convenient, while women remain the default parents.
Her critique isn’t about vilifying men, but about examining how gender norms fail everyone involved. Boys are raised to suppress emotional intelligence, she argues, while girls are conditioned to be caretakers.
“This is why the toy industry targets young girls with dolls and boys with rockets or cars,” Bailey wrote in her caption.
That simple childhood divide, she suggests, grows into an adulthood imbalance, one that leaves many women, even those in marriages, doing it all alone.
The shift among millennial and Gen Z women
Bailey’s message lands in a cultural moment when gender roles are under microscopic scrutiny. Her seeming frustration mirrors a broader shift among millennial and Gen Z women who are questioning the cost of “doing it all,” working, mothering, and managing households with little reciprocal support.
While her words may sting, they resonate because they’re painfully real for many women.
